PublicTechnology attended the industry organisation’s yearly event, which provided a snapshot of how government, blue light services, and councils are meeting the challenges and exploiting the opportunities of new tech
‘Building the Smarter State’ is the name given by techUK to its flagship public-service digital conference, hosted in London each autumn.
This year’s iteration, which took place earlier this year, is set against a backdrop of some hugely significant building work already taking place across the infrastructure of the state, as well as plenty more reconstruction being mapped out.
The start of 2025 brought with it the publication of government’s new overarching strategy for digital and data progress throughout Whitehall – a plan which has been followed-up by the funding committee in a comprehensive spending review, and will soon also be supported by a dedicated implementation agenda.
Meanwhile both the local government sector and the NHS are going through major structural overhauls – with innovation and technology typically forming a central strand of these plans.
All of which is taking place while the rise of artificial intelligence presents government, and the citizens it serves, with opportunities and challenges that could scarcely have been imagined even a few years ago.
The techUK event offered delegates and speakers from across the public sector the chance to examine all of these issues and initiatives. PublicTechnology, the conference’s media partner, listened in on the conversation.
Here’s some of what we heard.
Getting the board on board for transformation
For the past three years, NHS England has run the Digital Maturity Assessment programme to track technological progress in individual entities across the health service.
One of the aspects assessed by the initiative is organisational leadership – including considerations such as “do they have a digital leader on the board? Do they have a non-executive with a portfolio for technology?”, according to Sonia Patel, chief informatics officer for NHS England, speaking during the techUK conference’s opening panel.
Since the launch of the assessment scheme in 2022, there has been a 25-percentage-point uplift in the proportion of NHS boardrooms housing digital expertise – a figure which now stands at around 70%, Patel said.
“However, the job’s not done once you’ve got a digital leader on board,” she added. “We’ve got to ensure that boards [as a whole] own the digital agenda moving forward… in much in the same way that every board member [typically] has a level of confidence in terms of finance, in terms of people-leadership and management – I think digital needs to be equal in terms of kind of [members’] agenda, interest, and confidence.”
The NHS informatics chief added that high-profile new technologies can be a prompt for senior leaders to take proactive steps to increase their digital expertise.
“I think AI will be a bit of a catalyst, because what we’re seeing up and down the country is boards and chief execs demanding to know what is their AI strategy,” she said.
Not just the usual suspects in Whitehall
The health service’s success in growing digital interest and expertise outside of technical circles has also, in recent months, been replicated by central government, according to one of the civil service’s top tech officials.
Setting out a vision of sweeping transformation across departments, A blueprint for modern digital government was published in January by the new-look ‘digital centre of government’. As director general of digital centre design, Emily Middleton was a key figure in establishing government’s new tech hub, the mainstay of which is the expanded Government Digital Service – in its new home in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Speaking during the same panel as Patel, Middleton reinforced the need for strong digital leadership as a key theme of the strategy.
“Part of what we set out in the blueprint is an expectation that, by the end of the next year, every public sector organisation should have a digital leader on their board – and a digital non-executive as well,” she said. “We have made really good progress on that, and we will be talking about that more soon.”
Beyond this tech expertise at the most senior levels, the digital DG stressed the critical importance of “getting all our other leaders working in a multidisciplinary way, operating across boundaries – which we know is important for the kind of change we want to deliver”.
There have been promising signs in the past nine months that figureheads from beyond the digital and data realm are engaged in government’s transformation ambitions, according to Middleton.
“Since we published the blueprint, I have been heartened by the level of interest we have had from leaders across the public sector – who have not just been the usual suspects, [and have included] policy director generals, people who are in different kinds of delivery roles. There are all sorts of networks springing up, and the informal networks are as important as the formal networks,” she said.
Stating the obvious
“The worst insult and very best compliment I have heard about the blueprint for digital government was that it was really obvious, right?,” said Owen Pritchard, head of the Cyber, Digital and Technology Programme at the Local Government Association. “And I think people just don’t understand how difficult it is to write something that obvious about something this complicated.”
While characterising himself as a “a long-term advocate for local government”, the LGA tech leader welcomes the recent plan published by Whitehall’s digital centre – part of the power of which lies in its obviousness. The strategy also offers an overarching scope for convening and corralling that needs to come from the national government, according to Pritchard.
“It’s really important to recognise that – when you’re talking about systems change and you’re talking about the entire public sector – that can only come from central government,” he said. “Only central government has the power and the mandate to be able to do that. And I think that’s important to recognise from the outset.”
Citing “governance, culture, and vision” as the three core strands of good digital leadership, Pritchard added that the blueprint provides the UK public sector “for the first time, [with] a vision and a shared understanding of the state of digital government”.
“I know that [DSIT] are looking at a roadmap to operationalise it, and I hope and that will provide further clarity on the vision,” the LGA digital head added.
‘IT procurement spend has ebbed from local government to NHS’
Data from procurement research specialist Tussell – presented at the event by the company’s founder, Gus Tugendhat – demonstrates the shifting landscape for the public sector tech suppliers serving local authorities.
In the 2019/20 year, half of all public-sector IT procurement spending was accounted for by central government. This proportion has remained fairly stable in the years since then – standing at 49% in 2024/25.
But, in the same period, and beginning with the 2020/21 year that encompassed the majority of the coronavirus crisis, the balance of the rest of the market has moved markedly.
Five years ago, the local government and NHS sectors each collectively spent very similar amounts on digital and tech – respectively representing 18% and 19% of the overall IT procurement market.
In the last five years though, a significant gap has opened up: in 2024/25, only 15% of the market was accounted for by local authorities, while NHS entities spent 23% of the money invested in public sector tech contracts during the year.
Tugendhat said that austerity has eaten into councils’ budgets, while a greater proportion of public-service funding in general has been committed to supporting health and social care. The outlook for digital spending is not likely to change greatly in the near future, the Tussell chief added.
“In terms of the long-term budget for digital transformation, there will never be more headway for spending, or more money,” Tugendhat said. “There is evidence of digital transformation in the NHS; there is less evidence of that happening in local government. Not because people do not want to – but because the budgets are so stretched by the short-term needs making the long-term objectives even harder.”
How the Met Police is taking inspiration from start-ups
The Metropolitan Police Service is engaged in a process of implementing “precise policing” – an approach whereby the force’s investigative and enforcement resources are targeted based on data and analysis.
Speaking at the techUK event, the Met’s commissioner Mark Rowley claimed that this model will not only help police to do more with less, but also aligns with the long-standing principles in which law enforcement in this county is founded
“Tackling issues that matter most to communities – with their active support and participation – is the bedrock of policing with consent,” he said. “But demand is growing. Crime threats are becoming more complex, and the Met is shrinking. And, so, policing with precision – protecting the public with an ever-sharper focus on the most dangerous and prolific offenders and the most vulnerable people places – is absolutely essential. Precise policing means, means making the met more capable, more productive and more focused.”
The London force employs about 46,000, including over 33,000 officers charged with policing a city of about nine million people.
But, despite the scale of these numbers, the Met and its leader are taking cues from a very different environment.
“My thinking is, in part, shaped by four years outside policing: working with and advising several startups with the potential to transform public safety,” he told attendees. “I saw how founders turned unique technologies into real-world solutions and how tech can reform public services, especially policing.”
Rowley added: “But, from that vantage point outside, I also saw how poorly the public sector spots and scales good tech and how we can make it difficult for small companies to get foot in the door. Now, back in the Met, those lessons are at the front of my mind. I’m proud to lead over 40,000 officers and staff who work every day to keep London safe; [but], for too long, clunky processes, outdated technology and bureaucracy have been in their way. We’re changing that.”
Beyond the basics
According to Mark Thompson, chief digital, data and technology officer at the Home Office, is no longer fair to say that government needs to “get the basics right”.
“We’ve already got many world-class digital services – we’re already pretty good at this,” he said.
The tech chief cited tech services delivered by the Home Office – and used by hundreds of millions of people from across the world – such as passport renewals, border e-gates, and the digital platform for processing applications for electronic travel authorisations (ETAs).
“The ETA service… is basically approving one [application] a second, every single second of the year: that’s 30 million,” he said. “And t’s entirely automated – 98% of decisions don’t touch a human, and it’s a really sophisticated process in the background. So but that’s what you get when you build digital services, and the policy is thought of within the context of digital service.”
While government’s online service provision is often compared – and invariably unfavourably – to the consumer world and wider commercial sector, Thompson says that tools offered by the Home Office and its Whitehall counterparts bear comparison to some of society’s most widely used digital platforms.
“I’d say we’re about as good as banking,” he said. “I think, generally speaking, we’re probably a bit more sophisticated than banking – which has its own problems with legacy systems. But where I want to take [the Home Office] as an organisation is into: how can we be really contemporary and really excellent in the use of digital – and how can we codify policy development and operational service delivery more tightly through doing so?”
